Siege of Sarajevo

The Siege of Sarajevo (5 April 1992-29 February 1996) was the siege of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. The city of Sarajevo was besieged by the forces of the Yugoslav People's Army at the start of the war, and the Bosnian Serb "Republika Srpska" later took over the siege, setting up positions on the high ground around the city. The Srpski forces, commanded by Ratko Mladic, bombarded the city's Muslim neighborhoods, and civilian casualties were high during the siege. The 70,000-strong ARBiH force defending the city was poorly-equipped and unable to break the siege, even though they only faced 13,000 Srpski troops, who took up positions in the hills surrounding the capital. The city was bombarded by mortars and attacked by snipers, but the defenders managed to defend the city against the Serb blockade. In 1995, NATO began "Operation Deliberate Force", an air campaign targeting Serb positions around the city. The Serbs were forced to withdraw their artillery from the high ground in exchange for NATO halting its bombing campaign, which had destroyed the Serbs' communication network. The war ended with the Dayton Agreement of December 1995, but intermittent fighting continued until the last Serbs left their positions in Sarajevo in February 1996. Sarajevo was heavily damaged, and its population dropped from 525,980 people in 1991 to 300,000 after the siege, and many Serb leaders were tried for war crimes committed during the siege.